


The Two Moons Tales

by Zaczarowanyswierszcz



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adventure, Dragons, Elves, Fantasy, Fantasyfiction, Gnomes, Multiple Relationships, POV Multiple, Sylphs, Trees, fairytales - Freeform, forest, woodlandrealm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:27:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24716788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaczarowanyswierszcz/pseuds/Zaczarowanyswierszcz
Summary: There is a story. Year after year the wind brings it from the North along with the Season of Mists, and it drifts amidst trees like a dandelion seed over the grasslands. The story of shade, and shine that needed it. Of two moons.





	1. Of Férchén's and Falcho's birth

**THE TWO MOONS TALES**

**VOLUME I**

_**WHERE ROCKS AS BLACK STEEL, AND YELLOW POPPIES** _

**[DEVIANTART](https://www.deviantart.com/zaczarowanyswierszcz) **

* * *

Summary: There is a story. Year after year the wind brings it from the North along with the Season of Mists, and it drifts amidst trees like a dandelion seed over the grasslands. The story of shade, and shine that needed it. Of two moons.

* * *

_**Of Férchén's and Falcho's birth, and of the star scholar's sharp stare** _

Férchén and Falcho were elven twins, alike as two drops of warm rain during the Season of Drought, with hair as black as raven feathers and eyes as blue as petals of wood forget-me-nots. They were born on the first day of Cypress Month, in the 2223rd year of the Fifth Era, to an embroiderer Méra and a pedler Fen.

According to the custom of the Forest People, on the occasion of the boys' birth their month trees were planted. The villagers treated it rather as a symbolic gesture, as everyone knew well the climate in that part of the Land of Séras was not favorable to cypresses at all, and none of them had grown there for years. Strangely, however, the trees rooted, and old Salché, who in the village was considered a prophetess, and who supposedly knew the mysteries of nature better than some druids, found it a sign and said the boys would not only come under the care of cypress trees now, but would also inherit their character, charisma and urge towards perpetuity. Méra only laughed at these words, though, and said she did not believe in such things at all, for the Lord of Trees had created trees to be trees and her sons to be her sons, and they each would be their own selves, free from the others.

Salché shrugged and snorted. "What may wanderers from the seaside know of trees?"

There could be some truth in that as Méra and Fen in sooth came from the shores of the sea. For long years of their childhood and early youth, they had lived amidst the cliffs, dunes and seaside woods, in the land of falks, for whom the roar of a sea a thousandfold more precious secrets hid than the rustle of a forest.

Soon after the boys' birth, Fen decided to set forth on their journey once more, for pedlers never stayed anywhere for too long, such was the nature of their work and life. The children were strong, so Méra agreed with her husband, and with the arrival of the new month, they left the village at the break of dawn, heading southwestwards on foot to wait out snows in the warmer regions of Séras.

Old Salché never knew if she had been right, for she not anymore saw the boys. She had died a few years before a day Méra, Fen and their sons once again appeared in the village, bringing with them a soft wind and the smell of herbs.

"Take, try, buy! Will be enough for everyone!" called Fen when he spread the brought herbs out on a trunk of the fallen tree, and a group of elves gathered across the trunk began to sniff and taste the dried plants, jostling and pushing each other in the process. "Férch, pack into the sacs, move it, briskly, briskly!"

Alongside Fen stood no more than teen-age* Férchén, with his eyes on his own thoughts and the delicate trembling of oak leaves on the dense boughs high above him rather than on the dried herbs in front of him.

At the sound of his father's urge, Férch awoke reluctantly. Having brushed a strand of the black hair from his forehead and buried it under the hat, he reached for a linen sac and started to put the pieces of nettle leaves the first of the buyers had showed him into it.

_Where, on Likho, is Falcho? Why it's me who helps again?,_ he thought, partly with a grievance, partly with jealousy of what discoveries his brother had managed to make in this unfamiliar place of their birth, more interesting than trading of herbs at the moss-covered tree.

From such musings he was snatched by a voice from across the trunk, addressed to his father:

"Fen, is that you?"

Férch raised his head, and curiosity glittered suddenly in his careful eyes when before him he saw a figure of an elven old man with a gnomish gaze and a face wrinkled and dry as folds of rock, mightily pale in the grey light of a cloudy eventide. The old man was clad in a peculiar, dark blue mantle reminding Férchén of druids' cloaks he had once sighted in Sén Serén. They differed in embroidery, though - while the druidic mantles were ornamented with the sign of the Druid Council, entwining sprouts of all the month trees, the hems of this odd old man's cloak were finished, very neatly, with a gilded motif of star constellations, looking almost as wonderfully as in Férch's imagination illustrations of clusters of stars on the maps of the sky in the secret libraries of sylphs.

Father also looked at the old man, who had spoken to him, and his face beamed, so he must have recognized him.

"Fen!" the old man ascertained almost with a smile, then, going around the roots of the fallen oak, he walked to the other side of the trunk and spread his arms to embrace father. "So good to see you once more."

"And you must be a son of Fen, although unalike him you seem?" he asked soon afterwards when turned his shining like torchlight, golden-yellow eyes to Férchén.

For a while he pierced the boy with his gaze, at what Férch straightened up with inborn pride, raised his brow and said:

"Yes. I am Férchén."

The old man chuckled under his breath, as if in Férch's words he had found something particularly amusing, the prior graveness left not his eyes, though. "And where is your reflection in a looking glass, Férchén the Slayer of Storms?"

Even if the usually brilliant elven boy understood what in sooth this strange question was about, he already was too stunned by the old man's figure and astonished with the nickname he had called him to answer immediately. He just glanced at his father, who soon came to his help.

"You haven't changed a bit, Wélrod! Still, you mistake elven children for heavenly bodies," Fen said with amusement, he got serious, however, and as if lost in thoughts when Wélrod answered at that:

"Have I mistaken you for the false one?"

_The old man remembers father from when he was a child,_ thought Férch with growing interest. _Was father here as a child, then? And to which heavenly body did he compare him? Which did he compare_ _ **me**_ _to? Oh, why have Falcho and me never got any map of the sky, why?_

"It wasn't hard to not mistake me," Fen only said, then he turned to Férchén. "Where is Falcho? Usually it's impossible to split you, yet when it comes right down to it... Honestly!"

Férch shrugged vigorously, trying to show he knew not and that he himself would have wanted to know. Sometimes Falcho did not explain even to him what he did, or where he went, what always angered and hurt Férchén. He had never told his brother about it, though, since he himself was not sure why he cared so much. Perhaps, for Falcho's secrecy at the same time caused him some anxiety, even fear. Usually it seemed to Férchén that his brother and him were as close to each other as possible, and that they knew everything of themselves. On days like this, however, it was just the opposite, and Férch thought then he knew utterly nothing of Falcho, and the attempts to understand him were like catching a wind blow into a palm.

Férchén hated such days. He was afraid of them, though he knew not why.

Falcho was back not until after dusk, when the evening clouds had already faded away in the night sky, and the moons had begun to shine in it like the lighthouses in Sén Serén. They lighted a glade in the oakwood, whereon a major part of the village dwellers had gathered, strongly enough that the fireflies could rest from their work in the elven lanterns. The warm eventide during the ongoing Season of Drought had encouraged the Forest People to sit themselves down on the roots and the forest floor, and listen to Wélrod's amazing tales, feasting on the dried moss pancakes.

As was his custom, Falcho apologised politely to father for his absence, whereupon Fen raised his brow severely at first, then he just let it go, however, finding, as usually, that his anger would not change anything. His mother, on the other hand, the disobedient drifter soon humoured with a tiny, yet still large in an elven boy's palm cornflower, which he put into her dark hair with a charming smile on his face.

He then sat on the oak root beside Férchén, and with a head motion he pointed at Wélrod, sitting above everyone else, on the same felled by the storm tree where father had been selling his goods before.

"Who's that?" he asked his brother, brushing away from his tunic's sleeve yellow flecks in which Férch recognised plantain's pollen growing on the roadside.

"Were you not roaming alone the brushwoods, you would know," Férchén said at that reproachfully, raising his brow just like father. "Where have you been? What have you looked for beside the highroad?"

"A thing or two," replied carelessly Falcho, leaning his hands against the limb behind his back and looking up, into a black depth of the oak crown. After a moment, however, he again turned his gaze toward Férch and added, smiling with amusement at the sight of his brother's still grumpy face:

"Oh, do not be so sore, perhaps I'll tell you later… Is he a gnome?" He took interest in Wélrod again.

"Stop talking already," Férch barked. "Wélrod is starting his tale soon."

The old man in sooth had already begun to hush the gathering of elves with his hand, straightening up and sitting more comfortably on the fallen trunk. His long, smooth hair, shining like true silver, fell lightly on the dark blue robe, whereas the gnomish eyes blazed as gold in a smelting pot. The subtle nocturnal glow lighted him, and it suited him more than anything as he himself seemed to be a part of it, along with the moons and stars. Night sharpened Wélrod's features and filled them with grace and charm they possessed not by day, and of which everyone else on that woodland glade was also deprived. Now he truly reminded Férch of the druids from Sén Serén, majestic and mysterious.

When silence almost complete reigned in the clearing, disturbed only by the gentle music of crickets, Wélrod started:

_Long, long ago, at the threshold of times Master Oak had two children: a son and a daughter. The son had hair of oak leaves, unlike trees he shunned the brightness of sunlight, though_ , _pale he was and quiet, and days he spent in the dimness of a goldsmith workshop, melting gold and glass in the pots. His sister, on the other hand, was called "Meadow" sometimes, for so much life she had in herself as it, whole days she danced in it, in her eyes all the colors of wildflowers sparkled and a gown of their petals she wore. For all the differences, the brother loved the sister dearly, and she loved him. At evenfalls they sat together on a huge rock on the edge between the meadow and the wood, blissful and holding one another. The gentle glow of the Darksome Sage fell upon them, guarding the peace of their souls._

_One day, however, the evil Likho grabbed the sister to take the life and joy away from her. She then hid amidst a thicket of bracken and no one she wished to see, neither her father, nor her beloved brother, and henceforth leaves of fern fronds replaced her colorful kirtle. Bearing not to look at her sadness and misery, the brother spent days and nights in the workshop till he created a crystal in which the light of life he caught for his sister. A great work it was, that no one before him had done and no one after repeated, though also bold and foolish, for no being other than the Lord of Trees has the right to the light of life and can wield it. The brother did not give his sister the life back, but by spell he imprisoned it only in her reflection in a looking glass, wherein, even though mighty, false it became and cold like ice. When the brother saw what he had done, and that nought more he could do for his sister, in his sorrow and anger he broke the mirror, which fell to five pieces, while all life he cursed and turned himself into Likho as well._

_After time passed, Master Oak found four shards of the looking glass in his son's workshop, and knowing the power they had, he gave one of them to watchful care of all the Wardens of the Elements – falks, so that they would stir theirs with the sea froth, sylphs, so that the wind would blow their shard amidst the mountain peaks, gnomes, so that they would hide it in the underground maze, and dragons, so that the volcano lava would melt it, forewarning they should never dare to use it._

_What happened to the fifth shard, no one knows. The word was spread among trees for some time that the fifth piece the girl had taken, had pressed to her heart and along with it she sheltered back in the bracken's shade. The rumor soon became only a legend, however, just like this whole story, although some believe the girl might still be met sometimes in the thickets of ferns, lovely as a bloom. Thus, till now "Fern Flower" she is called._

When Wélrod finished the tale, no one spoke for some time, till Falcho eventually asked the same question that was circling in Férchén's head:

"What would happen once one put the shards together again? Would he know the secret of light the brother learned?"

The old man answered not at once, but started watching Falcho with his stabbing gaze of a raptor. After a moment Férch thought he himself would have already felt awkward under the searing burden of this stare, Falcho, however, did not even flinch and bore it with unwavering calm. His pale, porcelain face, paler even in nocturnal light of the moons, with a subtle, enthralling smile on it, gleamed like a pure diamond.

_He is always perfect,_ it suddenly crossed Férch's mind. _The perfect Falcho._

"Possibly so," Wélrod replied at last. "Yet no one knows that for sure. Druid Nolén, one of the greatest sylphish scholars believed once that who would bring the mirror's shards back together, would not just possess the mystery of light, but also the rulership over the elements. Woe to the one who will do it, though."

Crickets still played in the grass, in the dry, warm air of the night, when some time later Férchén leaned his elbows against a window frame in a house they occupied for a short time of their stay in the village. With a smile on his face, he stared for a while into the darkness of the oakwood and listened to the wondrous, insect music while shoots of plants growing on the forest floor and looking into the room brushed his face time and again.

Father liked not to live high up on trees as most of the Forest People did, so wherever they came they moved into empty hollows at the foot of trunks, or spaces under vast roots from which the houses were made. Mother more than once laughed at this strange, gnomish habit of father, she never opposed it, though. So now they too spent the night in a trunk of a thick oak hollowed out of wood, Méra and Fen downstairs, Férch and Falcho on a floor added inside the tree.

Eventually, Férch took his eyes off the dark night forest and turning back, he looked at Falcho. Dim candlelight was falling on the slim figure of his brother, who was leaning against the trunk's inner wall, sitting comfortably, with his hands behind his head and legs outstretched, on his bed covered with a blanket of an oak leaf. His eyes were blissfully closed, and he was smiling, his thoughts must have been circling around something pleasant, then.

"What do you think of?" Férchén asked.

"The same as you, sweet brother," answered Falcho, neither opening his eyes, nor moving.

They both fell quiet again. Férch smiled wider to himself and turned to look back through the window.

_To get the pieces of the looking glass and make the mirror whole,_ he dreamed.

After a moment, somewhere in the distance an owl hooted, and a light gust of wind brought its dull sound to their room. Férchén flinched.

_If it hoots again, we'll succeed,_ it unexpectedly came to his mind. He started listening impatiently, and when the owl spoke once more, his heart fluttered of childish, naive joy.

However, there was something else Férch thought of that warm night, now and later, when he lied in his bed, when even the crickets had already gone quiet - of how much he would have wished to talk to Wélrod once more before they would set forth on their journey again. The thought would not leave his head, and Férchén could not sleep because of it. In the silence of the room he listened to breaths, his own and Falcho's, equally restless as his, what meant his brother slept not as well. Till morrow they spoke not to each other, though.

Wélrod, however, appeared not in the village for a few days following, and Férch, although he had learned where the old man lived, had no courage to visit him alone, without any reason. Yet eventually, the Tree Masters helped the elven boy's wish and the reason came as, on the eve of their departure, Fen asked Férchén to carry a little pouch with a gift from him to Wélrod.

Férch did it more than gladly, and just after they ate the supper, and the sun hid behind tree crowns and moved slowly toward the west, he hurriedly grabbed the pouch and ran through the oakwood to its edges, beyond the village.

There, near the border between the forest and a meadow birches grew, and lupins and slender field grasses covered their feet. Up the highest and thickest birch a wooden stairway rose, attached to the trunk tightly, but with an elven technique, in order not to damage it painfully. Férch ran up a spiral of them surrounding the trunk, two or three steps at a time, and only halted when he reached a balcony in front of Wélrod's house. A strong tree bough supported the balcony from underneath, and from above, it was partly shaded by delicate birch branches falling toward it, partly lighted by the last rays of the setting sun.

Wélrod was not at home, though, and Férchén got saddened, having thought the old man might have left his birch for the whole night and he would not be able to see him again before the departure. His sadness flew away when he looked around and a few boughs above he saw a wooden plate of a terrace, and his keen elven ears heard the knocking of steps on it. Férchén again looked around then, but found not the stairs, so he began to climb higher up the trunk, inwardly admiring the old man's skill as he had to get to the terrace in the same way.

When Férch arrived, Wélrod was sitting on the edge of the terrace, with his legs dropped down and his back turned to him, so the eboy got surprised as the old man greeted him by his name.

"How have you known it's me?" he asked.

Wélrod laughed slightly, then, still turning not to Férchén, he said:

"I knew you by your steps. Each of the steps are unlike the others. You and your brother are so alike, your steps differ, though. Falcho's steps are strong and certain, while yours quick and fluttering, as if you were always hesitating which way to go."

Férch winced, for he liked not at all Wélrod's words. He knew not less than Falcho what he did want, and his pride told him to say it now, he refrained, though.

"Father asked me to bring you his farawell gift," he only said.

"Thank your father for me," answered Wélrod. "Now put the gift on the table and come here."

Having hidden a strand of hair under his hat, Férch put the pouch where the old man had told him, then came to him and sat beside on inaccurately planed terrace planks, dropping his legs down just like Wélrod. From that place on the tree a wondrous view at the sky spread, navy of the nightfall mixing with a yellow-orange glow of the sunset.

_Soon the stars will light up like rays of candles,_ Férchén thought, staring at the sky for a moment in silent admiration, then a question came to his mind.

"In the village they say you read the future in the stars almost as well as sylphish scholars. Is it true, can you really?" He moved his gaze to Wélrod, and feverish curiosity glittered in his eyes.

The old man chuckled again.

"Even a fool can read of stars if glares at them constantly for decades."

Férch again looked at the sky and for a while, he pondered over his next question. Eventually, he asked not about his future, what greatly surprised him himself. Since a few days he had thought of nothing but Wélrod telling him about it, now, however, he as if got scared and decided he wanted not to know the future until it came. He asked another question then:

"Must everything written in the stars come true?"

"No," Wélrod replied, smiling mysteriously. "For nought certain is written in stars, and only guesses blear as a morrow fog we may read of them. Not stars, but we ourselves decide on our fate, young Férchén, it's you who will see it one day."

* * *

* Elves from my tales live about 500 years, thus their age is calculated differently. Teen-age Férchén matches more or less 8-9-year-old human boy.

"e" in the elven speech we read as short e /ɛ/, "é" as long e /i/


	2. 1 THE JEWELSMITH OF NAN FARLAS

**1**

**THE JEWELSMITH OF NAN FARLAS**

**YEAR 2558**

Little light reached the undergrounds of Nan Farlas. The isle was hidden in gloom by vapors over the lake, and the ruins of the tower by a thick clump of alders. And what lay beneath the tower, the dungeons and endless dragon labyrinths, stone walls and clayey soil, tapped with gnomish hands, veiled.

There was a crack in the wall, though, through which by nights a thin ray of moonlight was falling in. Hubble had found it years before and used to look through it sometimes at the evening sky, especially when he lingered before leaving his beloved darkness and appearing at the Wizard's summons.

That evening, the sky gleamed brightly dark blue, and even the Darksome Sage was whole swathed in the sapphire glow like in a festive druid cloak of airy silk. When Hubble walked to the wall and almost stuck his upturned nose between the crevice of the crack, his sylphish eyes too shone with the same blueness of the night light, reflecting in them, and for a moment they became even more navy than they usually were.

Hubble let his chin down, and his gaze moved lower, toward a swarm of bats that was swirling wildly in the air, alternately flying in and out of the tower ruins as if in some neurotic dance.

_Black, blind fools,_ Hubble thought wearily and wrapped himself more tightly in his own wing, not knowing whether the thought was of bats or, perhaps, of himself. He did not have time to consider it, though, as he heard a cry, another and already somewhat impatient one, which, muffled, reached him from above, and then spread farther among the silent corridors of the labyrinth: "Hubble!".

The sylph winced. He loathed everything about the Wizard except his voice, that he could never hate - the dark, magical voice that had been ringing across the Last Dragon Island like a soothing song of a wood wetland.

The voice, suddenly and ferociously, awakened the warmth of day buried deep down in Hubble's dark, indifferent soul. The warmth was heating him for a brief while, and then something almost similar to joy was appearing in the heart of the Eternal Child of the Night.

However, the Wizard knew well what he was doing, for the happy memories were Hubble's greatest torment, they burned like dragon fire that unfortunate day, and the immediate desire to escape them brought him closer to the Wizard's darkness than anything else. Now, too, a shiver went through Hubble as if his body wanted to shake off every last scrap of those memories, whereupon the sylph rubbed his blackened eyes with the outside of his webbed hands, grabbed a torch from the wall and dragged himself on his crooked legs up the narrow stone staircase.

Hubble had served the Wizard for several decades, yet he remembered not the time when his master had rebuilt Nan Farlas from its first, ancient ruins and made his headquarters here. Nor did he know what had caused the place to become a ruin again, the one it was still. Even Hercho seemed not to know the truth of what had happened then, though he sometimes told of a mighty, mossy fire-tower among the alder boughs growing through the windows into its midst, and of the Lady of the Alders, mysterious and beautiful as a moonlit night, who spun threads lighter, whiter and more luminous than spider's web. One of the few things Hubble had not learned to treat with indifference were such tales, and ever since, at the beginning of his service for the Wizard, he had learned Hercho's wolf speech, he had listened to them with almost childlike enthusiasm, even if he had never let it be known, and had been reluctant to admit it to himself.

When the sylph reached the surface, a gusty wind from the lake, blowing with a dull whistle through the windows of the tower, pierced him. Hubble cared not at all, though, and without even flinching, only began to climb higher the great steps of another stairway, created by the hands of trees and too large for tiny sylphs' feet. Some of the steps were made of stones, here and there now moss-covered, with blades of grass growing between them. Others were simply the branches of the alders neighbouring the tower - these Hubble detested in particular. When he climbed them, his feet, not so well adapted to walking on branches as elven feet, slipped on the soggy bark as on a sheet of ice.

He finally walked onto the last step and found himself at a place that, since the fall of the tower, had been its highest covered floor. He breathed deeply, and his gaze moved again through the window to the sky, and then through the narrow clearance between the alder branches to the Chestnut Bridge, connecting Nan Farlas to the foot of the Mountains of the Moons, silvering like sword blades. The vast roots of the tree bridge passed directly from over the lake shore into the courtyard of the fortress hidden amidst the mountain rocks, as huge as the tower on the isle, glittering bluishly in the glare of the Misty Wanderer.

"Hubble!" a third cry rang out, even more impatient.

Someone not knowing well the Wizard of Nan Farlas might have not noticed this impatience at all, for, whatever he felt, the Wizard was always the same, reserved and distinguished. Hubble, however, had learned to recognise the subtleties in his voice with the precision of an embroiderer working ornate patterns full of color and interwining threads. He knew very well that his master's anger was worse than dragon fangs, even if he fell into it with a polite smile on his lips.

The workshop was drowning in dimness and dull silence when Hubble stepped inside. He noticed not the Wizard immediately. It was not until a simple, rough "Here you are" that he heard as his gaze went up the low, wooden stairs which connected to an alder bough leading to a nearby tree hollow - the backroom of the wokshop.

The Wizard stopped motionless on the bough for a moment, then began to walk down slowly. Hubble watched dispassionately as his tall figure was emerging gradually from the darkness as from a black mist, and the pale candlelight was falling higher and higher on the folds of his emerald silk cloak.

Paying no attention to Hubble, as if he were not there at all, the Wizard walked to the pot hung above the hearth in the spacious, clay furnace and went back to his work. So Hubble interwined his palms behind his back and stood still as a figure of stone, waiting to see what would happen.

"Matter," the Wizard said after a while, without even glancing at his sylphish servant, still stirring something in the pot with the rod in incredible focus. This inconspicuous goldsmithing activity, which he had already repeated hundreds of times before, he performed almost with solemnity. "What a spellbinding thing it is - matter. I have always valued it, for all that."

"Not for matter you keep sitting here at nights, Master Wizard," said Hubble as he moved closer to the furnace and managed to see the shadow of a subtle smile on his master's face. His own quiet voice rumbled disproportionately loudly in his head, and for a moment the sylph thought he had spoken those words unwisely and that he would be soon punished for them.

Before the Wizard said anything, though, the liquid in the pot boiled unexpectedly and expelled an orange-colored vapor than was thickening rapidly with each passing moment, so that in an instant it formed an ethereal cloud floating above the cauldron.

Hubble's bright, bulging eyes for a moment widened even more in sudden fright as it occurred to him, for some unknown reason, that this cloud would soon turn into fiery flames. The sylph quickly calmed down, though, chastising himself inwardly for his foolishness.

Even in the Wizard's wokshop steam turned not into fire, except through illusion.

"No," the Wizard replied then, and laughed mockingly, and Hubble was not sure whether he was laughing at his own words or at his fearful reaction. "Not for matter."

The vapor subsided and reunited with the liquid, just as quickly and spontaneously as it had come out of it. Hubble smiled crookedly at the inside of the pot, lifting slightly one corner of his clenched lips.

_Damned color,_ he thought.

The liquid in the cauldron boiled threateningly again, this time probably reminding the master of the workshop who was brewing it that he had slowed down the movements of the rot, which he should not have done. So the Wizard's hand holding the rot sped up, and his bright, beautiful face grew serious again and petrified for a moment in silent musings.

"Are you a good thief, Hubble?" he quietly asked at last, and his voice was icy and piercing this time as an echo from the depths of a well.

Hubble knew this was not a question the Wizard expected him to answer, so the sylph merely shifted from foot to foot and continued to wait motionless for his task.

"You will steal something for me," the Wizard said. "One elven boy."


End file.
